Former FEMA Director: Stop Second-Guessing Police

President Barack Obama's plan to reform local law enforcement in hopes of avoiding another Ferguson will ultimately weaken policing by making departments more reliant on federal largesse, says radio talk show host and former Federal Emergency Management Agency director Michael Brown.

The president's request to Congress for $263 million to change police practices and equip officers with body cameras is "just the opposite of what we need to do" after the violence in Ferguson, Missouri, Brown told "MidPoint" host Ed Berliner on Newsmax TV on Wednesday.

Story continues below video.

Note: Watch Newsmax TV now on DIRECTV Ch. 349 and DISH Ch. 223
Get Newsmax TV on your cable system —Click Here Now

Tempted by federal dollars that come with strings attached, "local law enforcement, local budget directors, start relying on that money," said Brown. "Then that weakens them in the future budget years. So, we inherently make local response weaker when we start relying on federal dollars."

"It's insane what we're doing right now," said Brown.

Brown also questioned Obama's premise: that police departments in Ferguson and elsewhere require reforms to improve relations with African-American communities and to prevent fatal encounters like that between an unarmed black 18-year-old, also named Michael Brown, and then-Ferguson officer Darren Wilson, who is white.

"I've been with cops," said radio host Brown. "I used to represent state troopers, and I've been in cars where they've been in a situation where they had to draw their weapons. I'm never going to second-guess a cop."

Brown said that in his state of Colorado, in the city of Aurora, "We had a black man shoot a white police officer, and that has just been buried in the news everywhere."

"We need to step back and realize, we're asking cops to do a very difficult job," he said. "Don't second-guess. There's nothing wrong with analyzing, nothing wrong with looking at it. But until you've been there, I don't think we can really say we get it."

The gesture refers to the disputed notion that in the Aug. 9 Ferguson confrontation, the other Michael Brown had his hands raised and was attempting to surrender when Wilson shot him several times.

Wilson and others testified that Brown was charging. The grand jury that heard Wilson's story and reviewed autopsy reports and forensic evidence declined to indict him.

The hands-up meme "is based on an absolute falsehood," said radio host Brown, but it has nevertheless "gained so much traction among the mainstream media, among what I call the race-baiters — the Sharptons and the Jacksons of the world.

"We are living in a world now where facts don't matter, and we're ignoring things that are really a threat," he said.

President Barack Obama's plan to reform local law enforcement in hopes of avoiding another Ferguson will ultimately weaken policing by making departments more reliant on federal largesse, says radio talk show host and former Federal Emergency Management Agency director Michael Brown.